Yeats's Discoveries of Self in the Wild Swans at Coole

Colby Quarterly Volume 8 Issue 1 March Article 3 March 1968 Yeats's Discoveries of Self in The Wild Swans at Coole James H. O'Brien Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq Recommended Citation Colby Library Quarterly, series 8, no.1, March 1968, p.1-13 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. O'Brien: Yeats's Discoveries of Self in The Wild Swans at Coole Colby Library Quarterly Series VIII March 1968 No.1 YEATS'S DISCOVERIES OF SELF IN THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE By JAMES H. O'BRIEN lthough a relatively small collection, The Wild Swans at A Coole (191'9) contains a complex presentation of a major theme in Yeats's work-his search for a fusion of the powers of self. From Responsibilities (1914) onwards, Yeats builds his volumes of poems around some crisis of the self. In The Wild Swans at Coole he continues this quest-despite the attrition of age, the death of friends, and the torment of broken memories. Here he binds the poems together with a plan for restoring the maimed powers of self. Frequently The Wild Swans at Coole is singled out for the series of didactic poems at its conclusion, poems that mix occultism with his art. But these concluding poems may be regarded as part of an intricate study of the self: ( 1) the poet's declaration of the plight of an ageing man with waning imaginative powers, (2) his deliberate withdrawal from the modern confusion, (3) his venture into a bewildering but sporadically ecstatic "reliving of the past," and (4) his revela tion of a system encompassing the intensities possible to the self. Yeats explores the way of the self most fully in his poems, which exceed in depth, extension, and precision anything to be found in his prose, such as Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918). In prose, Yeats sketches rough psychological landscapes which he perfects in his poems. For him, prose is a means for prob ing his experience; in a sense, his prose prepares for the intense imaginative fusion of the poems. In A Vision, for instance, Yeats cannot trust his communicators and frustrators; he spends tedious hours separating their misleading from their authentic revelations. But the poems arise from an impulse that is strong and in its urgency and independence irrefutable. Published by Digital Commons @ Colby, 1968 1 Colby Quarterly, Vol. 8, Iss. 1 [1968], Art. 3 2 Colby Library Quarterly In The Wild Swans at Coole Yeats reemphasizes the solitude and freedom required for unity of being, a guiding theme in Re sponsibilities. In the modem era, the poet's first task is to cultivate a c,old, austere control so that he does not succumb to the commercial spirit, to sentimentality, or to philosophies that imprison either will or intellect. Even though the poet is con fronted with the unwieldy grief of the death of friends or the ser. rated memories of Maud Gonne, he skillfully guides his, emotion and thought into artistic molds. In his newly-purchased Norman Tower in County Galway, cut off from the tumult and bitterness of Dublin, he finds a proper habitation for dramatiz ing his inclusive system of the self. Equipped with a map of the principal stages of the self, the poet quickly identifies and makes poems out of a variety of eruptions of the self that formerly drifted away as experience unsuitable for verse. In this volume Yeats strenuously prepares to realize some of his first ambitions as poet; in a large sense, the volume, with its poems on Yeats's system, serve as a prelude to the greater poems of The Tower and The Winding Stair. The poems of The Wild Swans at Coole reflect only obliquely the problems of a dedicated artist, a man in his early fifties, re cently married to a young woman with a gift for automatic writ ing. He seems all but oblivious of unspeakable barbarism of World War I and the brutalities of the guerrilla struggle with the Black and Tans. At this period he closes himself to external controversy, so enmeshed is he with his discoveries of the self, his special province as artist. In the first poem "The Wild Swans at Coole" he speaks with subdued firmness of an autumn that reflects his interior state: The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; (variorunl ed., p. 322) As he recalls the nineteen years that have passed since his first view of the lake, he is vexed by the seeming permanence of the swans and the drastic decline of his own strength: "I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,/And now my heart is sore." The swans defy the flux: "Their hearts have not grown old"; for the,m passion and conquest remain in the future" but https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq/vol8/iss1/3 2 O'Brien: Yeats's Discoveries of Self in The Wild Swans at Coole Colby Library Quarterly 3 for him "all's changed." Meditating on the swans, he contends with an emptiness in himself: Among what rushes will they build, By what lake's edge or pool Delight men's eyes when I awake some day To find they have flown away? (p. 323) In his later poems Yeats cries out against the remorseless decline of his physical powers, but in "A Song" of this volume he tries to delay this loss by using dumb-bell and fencing foil. In addi tion, his increasing nlastery of words seems to retard the ero sion of time. Yet he had not anticipated an atrophy of feeling: Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? o who could have foretold That the heart grows old? (pp. 334-335) But even as he laments the passing of youth, passionate desire flares up, exacerbating his grief; o would that we had met When I had my burning youth! But I grow old among dreams, A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams. (p. 329) Exhausted by the years, irritated by memories, torn by seem ingly irreconcilable conflicts, the poet experiments with several methods of restoring intensity. First he studies sculpture, but after a time he admits that "the wick and oil are spent / And frozen are the channels of the blood." To respond to the pas sion dormant in statues, he needs the elan of youth: . 0 heart, we are old; The living beauty is for younger men: We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears. (pp. 333-334) But Yeats mockingly rejects the temptation of literary criticism. In "The Scholars," he scoffs at bald scholars annotating and commenting upon the poems of a feverish Catullus (p. 337). In age, the poet himself aspires to join the company of Landor and Donne, poets who sustained passion and art into their final years. But to achieve this ambition, he must protect himself Published by Digital Commons @ Colby, 1968 3 Colby Quarterly, Vol. 8, Iss. 1 [1968], Art. 3 4 Colby Library Quarterly from exposure to the foolish and vulgar. In advising a young artist inclined to Bohemianism, he claims "There is not a fool can call me friend" (p. 336). In this volume Yeats examines at length the armor the poet needs to protect himself from the current vulgarization of life. ~geniously and profoundly he elaborates on a feeling describe,d in The Green Helmet (1910) as the desire to b,e "Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish" (p. 267). Although Yeats often writes about this emotional and intellectual complex, critics, with the exception of Ben Reid,l have avoided analysis of its implications. At first glance, this state seems a prelude to unity of being, but because of modem man's ignorance of sub jective processes the prelude b,ecomes a state in its,elf; in fact, it marks the decisive separation of an individual from the objec tive, external world. In a broken world, even the resolution to unify personality assumes substantial form. In part, Yeats's withdrawal resembles Keats's "diligent Indolence," about which Lionel Trilling remarks: "By being conscious of his surrender to the passive, unconscious life he has affirmed the active prin ciple."2 In his way, Yeats cultivates Wordsworth's "wise pas siveness" or what John Stuart Mill calls the "passive susceptibli ties." Nietzsche's description of a "screen of oblivion" pro vides a rationale for Yeats's withdrawal: The role of this active oblivion is that of a concierge: to shut tem porarily the doors and windows of consciousness; to protect us from the noise and agitation with which our lower organs work for or against one another; to introduce a little quiet into our consciousness so as to make room for the nobler functions and functionaries of our organism which do the governing and planning. This concierge maintains order and etiquette in the household of the psyche; which immediately suggests that there can be no happiness, no serenity, no hope, no pride, no present, without oblivion.S At times Yeats uses his screen of oblivion to attack senti mentalists whom he defines as "practical men who believe in money, in position, in a marriage bell, and whose understanding of happiness is to be so busy whether at work or at play, that all is forgotten but the nlomentary aim."4 In "The Collar-Bone 1 Ben Rpil1, William Butler Yeats: The Lyric oj Tragedy (Norman, Okla homa, 1961), 124.

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